Eloquence is not a substitute for character, experience

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hail a black man as president – a beautiful symbol showing that America has risen above past prejudices and can continue to stand proud in the world. Of course it would. The vast majority of our people are far beyond the color of a man’s skin and it would be glorious to have the unknowing rest of the world enlightened. But, sadly, the facts reject such a high claim for Senator Obama because eloquence is not a substitute for experience. He has less executive experience than McCain’s VP choice – Sarah Palin. In fact, no executive experience. His claims of having reached across party lines are thin to non-existent. He is no Colin Powell.

Eloquence is not a substitute for character. He ran from his church of 20 years only after the Minister Wright’s long-held, American-hating rhetoric was made public. He ran from Bill Ayres, a close associate and unrepentant terrorist, only after the association was revealed. He literally runs from his past.

His roots aren’t in Kansas. They are in Hawaii and Harvard – in elitist schools with proven leftist’s teachings. He has never lived, worked or played in the country and obviously doesn’t understand our economy or values. His words (in San Francisco),

“You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them.

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And it’s not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

His “paper trail” is extremely thin: Has not provided more than one page of “medical records”, has provided few papers from his Illinois Senate days and hasn’t listed his law firm’s clients. The papers from the “Chicago Annenberg Challenge”, which he chaired, were suddenly closed by the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois Chicago.

He has the most leftist voting record in the Senate and his VP choice has the third most left record – properly earning the label “Socialist.”

And then there are the issues. He believes that every American has a right to go to college – meaning that people who choose to be plumbers or painters will pay for many who may or may not belong there. He will not appoint judges to interpret the law, but rather to make it – not what the Judicial Branch of government was intended for. He would institute universal socialized medicine – a sure formula for terrible service. He favors many other new spending programs – much more than “only the rich” can pay for. He favors several new taxes including more taxes on corporations who merely pass it thru to we consumers and/or suffer in competition with foreign companies and/or send jobs off-shore. He does not support gun ownership or English as the official language. He does support abortion throughout the pregnancy, same sex marriage and giving Social Security benefits to illegals. He has not supported drilling for American oil offshore.

All experience, character and policies are in stark contrast to Senator McCain.

As Thomas Sowell a black, a professor and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institute and author of numerous books and articles wrote; “There is no reason why someone as arrogant, foolishly clever and ultimately dangerous as Barack Obama should become president – especially not at a time when the threat of international terrorists with nuclear weapons looms over 300 million Americans.”

Frank Watts

Winter Park Highlands

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